News Intel's Regrettable Error: Apollo Lake Chips Not Dying, After All

Aug 29, 2019
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First thing I thought about when hearing this story is relationship with Lakefield but it sounds like some employee open mouth when they should not. But it does seam there is bug in previous chips and curious if it could be fix with bios update / micro code update.
 

bigdragon

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Intel is about as hyper-conscious of appearances as game publishers are. This looks to be damage control following Intel poking at AMD's long term reliability. This sort of flip flop statement changes what looked like Intel hypocrisy into a matter of integrity. I think the integrity ding is far worse than the hypocrisy.

Intel seriously needs to get it together and focus on their products rather than their brand image. Muzzle the marketing and PR staff and support the engineers to deliver improved hardware and software.
 
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Aug 29, 2019
35
7
35
Intel is about as hyper-conscious of appearances as game publishers are. This looks to be damage control following Intel poking at AMD's long term reliability. This sort of flip flop statement changes what looked like Intel hypocrisy into a matter of integrity. I think the integrity ding is far worse than the hypocrisy.

Intel seriously needs to get it together and focus on their products rather than their brand image. Muzzle the marketing and PR staff and support the engineers to deliver improved hardware and software.

Seriously this about Apollo chips and any one would crazy to think of them aim at gaming. As far as Ryzen concerns they are not even in the picture here -desktop chips primary and what is last 2 years 3 or 4 revisions of Ryzen chips and lets not even get into AMD poking fun at Intel which yes I will omit they struggle getting over 14nm but the world is not just focus on gaming.

But AMD is good for Intel because it keeps them on their toes. But I believe computers need to involved more than just more cores.
 

silverblue

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Doesn't matter. Intel released a slide deck within which they called Ryzen 3000's long-term reliability into question using "unproven theories". Given that they have just been forced into an about-face on Apollo Lake's discontinuation thanks to a firmware update, and given that AMD's released new firmware to allow Ryzen 3000 to better hit those boost clocks despite those reliability accusations, I think the real issue is Intel's integrity or lack of it, and one might argue that this is regardless of the type of product. As such, a comparison can and will be made. Any dirt that Intel throws at AMD will be believed by somebody, leading to baseless allegations like "AMD make unreliable processors". That sort of crap can damage a company and leads to lawsuits.

Anandtech hasn't posted an article on this yet, but when they do, I fully expect you to post the same thing over there before getting half-a-dozen responses that mostly focus on your (quite obvious) Intel bias.
 
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AnybodyM

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Wow, pulling the document, what a dick move. This really doesn't look like the chips are not dying, this only looks like they don't want to admit it after all. I guess we'll see a lot of NAS devices dying in the next years - great!

Even if the firmware fix works, many devices won't get it.
 
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bigdragon

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Seriously this about Apollo chips and any one would crazy to think of them aim at gaming. As far as Ryzen concerns they are not even in the picture here -desktop chips primary and what is last 2 years 3 or 4 revisions of Ryzen chips and lets not even get into AMD poking fun at Intel which yes I will omit they struggle getting over 14nm but the world is not just focus on gaming.

But AMD is good for Intel because it keeps them on their toes. But I believe computers need to involved more than just more cores.
Companies taunt each other all the time. It's not unusual for them to pick at each other or even engage in hypocrisy -- AMD does it too.

The problem here is that Intel hit AMD for longevity concerns on Ryzen CPUs, Intel revealed longevity concerns on Apollo Lake, and then Intel announced there are no longevity concerns with Apollo Lake while simultaneously releasing a new longevity-focused stepping. Intel picked a marketing fight with AMD via a longevity litmus test. Intel then revealed they failed their own litmus test with Apollo Lake. To save face, Intel is now denying that there is a problem with Apollo Lake while simultaneously releasing a new stepping and acting as if there is a problem. "Do what I say, not as I do." No, Intel; actions speak louder than words.

The whole situation looks like a self-inflicted, marketing-driven, integrity hit for Intel. They should have countered the hypocrisy claims by defining Ryzen as a desktop or gaming CPU while defining Apollo Lake as a resource-constrained or role-specific CPU. A resurgent AMD appears to be causing Intel to spend its resources on marketing convincing us that Intel is better rather than delivering that post-Core era knock-out punch we all expected a a year or two ago in response to Ryzen.